Developing Listening and
Speaking Skills

 What should be the main goal of an English language cousre?
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To focus on developing students’ mastery of the the language form
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To focus on developing students’ ability to effectively communicate for study, work or leisure

 We communicate because we want to or need to,
NOT just to practise the language
 Focus is on what we are communicating NOT on how we are communicating (ideas vs. language)
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The language that is used is VARİED in grammar and vocabulary, NOT made of a single structure or a few structures and NOT normally repeated over and over again

Communication in the Classroom
 If you want to encourage real communication in the classroom you need to
 Establish English as the main classroom language
 Try to use interesting topics and stimulating activities, which take the learners’ minds off the language
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Real life events ( weather, the students’ cloths, their health and mood, pictures and realia brought to class)
 Events in the world outside ( new films, a circus in town, national sports victory, the students’ families, etc.)

 Focus on fluency vs. accuracy
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Support and encourage listeners in their efforts to communicate their ideas
Don’t try to control what they say
Don’t interrupt learners everytime they make a language mistake to correct them.

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Listening is not a ‘passive” skill but a
“receptive” skill. It requires as much attention and mental activity as speaking.
 That of the time an individual is engaged in communication, approximately 9 per cent is devoted to writing, 16 per cent to reading, 30 per cent to speaking, and 45 per cent to listening.

Debates concerning the development of listening skills
 Debates focusing on the nature of listening input
 Whether or not listening should be made comprehensible for learners through simplification?
 Debates focusing on the role of listening in the early ELT curriculum
 Whether teachers should stress the importance of learners haing a “silent period” in the early stages of learning and wait for “readiness” to produce the language

Debates concerning the development of listening skills
 Debates on the role of listening for comprehension and development of oracy (the ability to understand and participate in spoken communication)
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How can classroom practice rehearse the kinds of listening purposes and situations that learners will experience outside the classroom?
How can we help learners build confidence in dealing with authentic spoken English?
What kind of classroom procedures will develop listening ability?

What do we know about the listening process?
 There are two types of listening processes
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Bottom-up process
Top-down process
 Bottom-up:
 We use our knowledge of language and our ability to process acoustic signals to make sense of the sounds that speech presents to us
 Top-down
 We infer meaning from contextual clues and from making links between the spoken message and various types of prior knowledge which we hold.

 Bottom-up processes
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Retain input while it is being processed
Recognize word divisions
Recognize key words in utterances
Recognize key transitions in a discourse
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Another interesting development was…
One of theproblems was.. / In contrast…
Recognize grammatical relations between key elements in sentences
Recognize the function of word stress in sentences
Recognize the function of intonation in sentences

 Top-down processes
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Use key words to construct the schema of discourse
Infer the role of the participants in a situation
Infer the topic of a discourse
Infer the outcome of an event
Infer the cause and effect of an event
Infer unstated details of a situation
Infer the sequence of a series of events
Infer comparisons
Distinguish between facts and opinions

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Participatory Listening
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Interactional (for the purpose of engaging in social rituals)
Transactional (for the purpose exchanging information)
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İdentification of specific details
Non-Participatory
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Listening to live conversations without taking part
Listening to announcements to extract info.
Listening to or watching films, plays, radio and songs where purpose is enjoyment
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Following instructions in orderto carry out a talk efficiently
Attending a lecture or following a lesson
Liistening someon egive a public address

 Creating reasons for listening (motivate students)
 Teachers need to ensure that learners experience a range of listening purposes, especially those that might be immediately relevant to their lives outside the classroom.
 What purpose might there be for listening to this particular text?
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Is thatpurpose similar to the purpose a listener might have in real life?
Does the task given to the learner encourage that listening purpose?

 Which is more authentic?
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Asking learners to listen to a short airport announcement to obtain information about a particular flight, as a passenger ?
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Asking learners to listen for the details of four different flights ?
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 Skills that are practised
Listening for key words
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Picking out relevant information
Retaining significant details

 The standard procedure used for listening activities are
 Pre-listening stage
 While-Listening stage
 Post-listening stage

 The purpose of the pre-listening stage is to
 Prepare the learners for what they are going to hear by
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 activating existing prior knowledge introducing necessary schematic knowledge
Introducing the language which students will encounter
 Objectives
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Contextualize the text
Provide any information to help learners appreciate the setting and the role relationships between particiapnts

Activity types for the pre-listening stage
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Predicting content from the title of a talk
Talking about a picture which relates to the text
Discuss relevant experiences
Discussing the topic
Answering a set of questions about the topic
Agreeing or disagreeing with opinions about the topic
Associate vocabulary about the yopic
Predict info. about the topic
Write questions about the topic

 Purpose of While-listening stage is
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TO HELP learners understand the text
While learners listen they need to be involved in an authentic purpose for listening and encouraged to attend to the text more intensively

 Ticking multiple-choice items
 Filling in a chart
 Complete a table, map or picture
 Matching pictures with the text
 Making notes
 Answer questions
 Complete sentences

 The purpose of post-listening activities is to help learbners connect what they have heard with their own ideas and experienxe.
 Helps learners to move easily from listening to another skill.

 Give opinions
 Relate similar experiences
 Role-play a similar interaction
 Write a brief report
 Write a similar text
 Debate the topic